A Walk In Scotland

Friday broke the streak and dawned rainy and gray. 

I got tired of looking through the windows at the drizzle and figured if I walked the woods I might not get too wet. Ha!

It didn’t work and I walked back to the cottage damp but refreshed. I took a nap, drifting off with my latest Longmire novel on Kindle  sliding  off my chest. 

I decided to have another go at ducking the showers blowing in from the ocean. Do I took off walking down the A835 highway  hoping to keep my feet dry. 

My father built these chalets in the 1960s as a hotel and restaurant. They have new owners now renting them out as vacation homes. 

My father met my mother in Italy.  during World War Two and she went to live with him in London. They had twin daughters in 1947 and me in 1957. They divorced in 1969, then my mother died leaving her land in Italy to us three children in 1973. Our father remarried an Englishwoman and had Lucy who grew up in England. Later Lucy’s mother, my stepmother, died followed by the patriarch in 1998 who left the Scottish estate to Lucy. 

The day before the wedding, guests gathered for afternoon tea before Lucy’s sons ushered everybody out to witness an ancient Highland custom. Luke and Lucy had to be blackened.

The idea is to cleanse the betrothed by paradoxically covering them in muck. Hauled to the site in wheelbarrows (dressed in old clothes) they are tied together and covered in molasses. I added my handful of chicken feathers kindly provided by the boys. 

In addition to molasses some flour was added to the happy couple as they stood and suffered. 

Some straw is piled up as part of this absurd purification project. 

I was pleased to see no fruit or eggs were included in the torture. 

Duncan with a bag of flour enjoying his mother’s misery. 

Luke making the best of it. 

Aww. Sweet. 

Oh wait. 

Johnny had a bucket of cow manure so proper tradition was maintained, much to everyone’s delight. 

Alex whom I last saw traveling on our boat with Lucy through the Panama Canal in 1999 orchestrated the chaos, he of the green jacket. We’re both a bit greyer now, he said. 

Enough levity, I got a ride back to my cottage while the happy couple washed off. The hardier celebrants lit a bonfire down by the farm. They needed it, it was cold. 

Enough people for me. A whole afternoon talking.